


It’s the Little Things

by brightstarlings (gingerpunches)



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Kerry is a sweet boyfriend that whats to shower V with love and attention, M/M, V doesn’t know what a rose is, but not too naughty, naughty yoga, specifically V trying new things, this is literally just self indulgent bath fic im sorry, trying new things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:54:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29700165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerpunches/pseuds/brightstarlings
Summary: It always was the little things.
Relationships: Kerry Eurodyne/V
Comments: 9
Kudos: 94





	It’s the Little Things

**Author's Note:**

> this was born from a friend drawing V and Kerry in a bath together. now the entire discord is going nuts for baths so here you go.

It’s hilarious the things V isn’t familiar with when he finally settles in at Kerry’s place.

Fine liquor, for one, though he’s slow to break the habit of not drinking for so long after Johnny hitched a ride in his brain. Kerry has an abundance he hasn’t touched only because getting the cheap shit felt more genuine, even when he was trashed, so finally opening up one of the fancy glass bottles of scotch and watching V’s pleased expression as he sips it feels like a wound finally closing after spending a long time festering.

V’s nose wrinkles at sunbathing — “I spend enough time out in the sun in the Badlands, Ker, but I  _ will _ watch you tan  _ your  _ bare ass.” — and yoga is a completely foreign concept to him. Kerry does get him settled on a mat one morning though, after a long few hours spent in bed doing a whole lot more than sleeping, the both of them warm and languid and still flirty.

“Like this,” Kerry says, guiding V’s body into a stretch across the mat. His hands fit perfectly around V’s waist, holding him as he struggles to hold the stretch over his legs as he reaches for his toes. They’re both still warm from earlier, and V smells like sweat and sex and the cologne still wearing off from yesterday. 

Kerry leans closer to bury his nose behind V’s ear. The pose is suggestive, V bent over with Kerry slotted in behind him, but Kerry reigns in his libido before he can toss V into bed for another round when V grunts from pain and not pleasure, his body too tight and high strung. 

“Is it supposed to hurt?” V hisses. His ribcage expands under Kerry’s hands, sucking in a sharp breath before he releases the tension coiling tight in his muscles and sits up. “I don’t know how you do this shit. I feel like my whole body hates moving like this.” 

“Yeah, it’s supposed to,” Kerry laughs.  _ Note to self: start with smaller poses before forcing V into yoga. _ “Supposed to stretch all your muscles out so you’re more limber.” 

He purrs the last word, unable to keep his hands from dropping to V’s hips now. V takes the hint, turning and pushing him back into bed, and yeah, maybe they both like yoga a little more, now.

V can swim, thankfully, and after coaxing him into the pristine blue water of Kerry’s pool, it’s hard to drag him out. Not that it’s hard to watch — V is a tall order of compact muscle and beautiful, flowing lines, his body a honed weapon that moves just as gracefully during play as it does during a fight. They find shared time together at the pool, Kerry sunbathing, V swimming, sometimes spending hours like that until they’re both a shade darker than they were that morning. 

It’s nice, wasting time when before V had none to spare. Now he has so much stretching out in front of him, and Kerry is intent on showing this street kid what life can be like when it isn’t actively trying to kill him at any given moment. 

They order nice dinners in. Spend long evenings on the couch watching Little Big Corporats, wrapped up in blankets and a bowl of popcorn between them. V is so used to synthetic crap that it takes him a long time to warm up to food that wasn’t spit out from a vending machine, so Kerry cooks for him at least three times a week, introducing him to Filipino food as much as American staples like steak and potatoes. They find out V likes fish, so for a few nights Kerry makes it several different ways, from fried to baked to smoked over cedar wood chips — all of it worth the pleased, genuine grin on V’s face when he takes that first bite. 

He learns V’s lines in the sand, too, through all this experimenting. Learns that V has a fear of not remembering, either through the haziness of drug use or alcohol abuse. Apparently, Johnny had taken him on an all-night bender and left V to pick up the pieces, and for days they’d ignored each other (as much as you could ignore a construct sharing your brain). Kerry gets it, he does, so he swipes that idea off the table from the get. He doesn’t want to scare V — just show him new things. 

Things like massages. V is so tense all the time, so watching him relax under Kerry’s hands as all the aches and pains melt away is perfection. He’s pretty good at doodling, too, which Kerry only discovers through the many love notes V leaves around the villa after a few weeks of living there together. Small things, like little drawings of them kissing, or Kerry stretched out on the couch napping — Kerry bent over his guitar trying new chords with Nibbles curled into a tight, wrinkly ball beside him. 

Kerry keeps each one. V is a good artist, but he won’t push if V doesn’t want much more than Kerry’s happiness from the drawings. He buys a portfolio with plastic sleeves in it to store them all, and if he flips through from time to time (read: at least once a day), V doesn’t seem to care. 

But the next thing Kerry tries is a surprise. V is out, fucking around in the Badlands with Panam — where he spends a lot of his free time if he’s not causing trouble with Rogue or Claire in the city — and Kerry has been in meetings all day with the label and the Us Cracks girls. He’s exhausted, even with how nice it is to hang out with the three of them. They’re nice girls, and he’s happy V convinced him out of his territorial pissing contest with them long enough to see the light. 

“We hope you have a fun date with V!” Red Menace croons as all four of them exit the MSM building. Kerry turns a surprised look on them, one they all smile and giggle at. 

“What makes you think I have a date?” Kerry says, laughing a bit. “You guys reading my texts or something?” 

“Kerry-san always looks so longingly at his phone when V texts him,” Purple Force sighs. She hasn’t dropped the cutesy J-Pop persona just yet, though it doesn’t grate on Kerry like the first few times he encountered it. It was part of the act, just like his own when he was on stage. 

Though, all three of them are perceptive as hell, and pick up on his blush almost immediately when his phone buzzes in his pocket. “Shut up,” he laughs as he digs it out. “Let me have this. Jesus.” 

“You’re in love!” Blue Moon says. “Oh, Kerry, please let us plan the wedding — you’d look so dashing in gold with V in silver beside you — the sun and moon for your beachside ceremony —!” 

“Alright, alright!” Kerry laughs, now thoroughly embarrassed. “I get it, my mainline is juicy gossip for you three. But there’s no date.” 

All three girls groan. Fuck, he and V haven’t been together for more than a year and already these girls were planning his wedding? Well, the thought was nice, and seeing V in a suit on the beach would really be a treat…

Hands pushing him towards his car breaks him out of his pleasant daydream, followed by giggling of all three girls behind him. “Just go,” Blue Moon says. In her normal voice, the faux-sugary sweet persona wiped away. “Tell him hi for us, okay? And that you guys  _ should _ go on a date!” 

It wasn’t that Kerry was opposed. But V had to keep a low profile, and Kerry was so close to releasing his new album. They held hands in public and got coffee together every morning — it’s not like either of them weren’t seen together whatsoever — but to drag V out for a fancy dinner where either of them could get accosted in the middle of everything?

So that’s what’s brought him here. Standing in his bathroom, testing the water of his truly humongous bathtub as it fills with water. He feels like a housewife waiting for his husband to return home, but instead of a housewife he’s an octogenarian rockstar and his husband is a merc boyfriend with a boy scout streak a mile wide. There’s a punchline in there somewhere, but before Kerry can search for it, he hears the rumble of the  _ Javalina _ coming up the drive outside, and he hops to his feet.

“Oh, look at you,” Kerry snorts when V comes in. He’s covered head to toe in a fine layer of orange dust, making him look like the last dredges of a Cheetos bag instead of six feet of imposing merc. V smiles, all teeth, and wraps his arms around Kerry before he can hop away.

“Missed you, Ker,” V says, planting a dusty kiss to Kerry’s cheek. Kerry squirms, but there’s little he can do once V has his arms around him. 

“You’re getting  _ me _ all fucking dirty, V!” Kerry growls. “I just cleaned my jacket too, you jackass. All that hard work, wasted —“ 

“Here, let me show you how much I don’t care,” V laughs. He rubs his face against Kerry’s cheek,  _ more _ dust and dirt grinding into Kerry’s skin. Kerry pushes with all the strength he has against V’s chest, managing to separate them enough to get V’s nasty gritty coating off of his million dollar skincare routine. 

“Listen, you fucking dirty gremlin,” Kerry seethes, but there’s no heat. He’s so close to laughing his cheeks hurt from smiling. “I made you a bath because I thought you’d come back here dirtier than a Night City gutter, and it turns out I was right, so get your ass in the bathroom before I get my skin grated off by the amount of rocks stuck to you.”

“Only got caught in two haboobs,” V whines. “C’mon, Ker —“ 

“ _ Bathroom.”  _ Kerry points. Now he really can’t stop laughing. “Now.”

V sulks, but he does slink into the bathroom like he’s told. Kerry grumbles mostly because now he really does have to clean his jacket, but tosses it onto the back of the couch before he can get truly angry about it. He hasn’t seen V in three days, and he really wants to just… let go for a few hours to be with him.

V is shaking all the dirt and rocks from his shoes when Kerry joins him, half undressed and looking like he feels better already. V perks up when Kerry comes behind him and lays a warm hand in the center of his back, leaning into it as he straightens. 

“I really did miss you,” V says softly. Kerry waves on the shower, then tugs V close, kissing his chapped lips. “Missed you a lot,” V murmurs against his mouth.

“Missed you too,” Kerry sighs. God, did he miss V. He unthreads V’s belt, pushing his jeans and boxers down in one go. Then he gently shoves V back into the wide shower stall, shucking off his own clothes before following him in under the spray of warm water. “Now, clean up. You’re fuckin’ filthy.” 

V’s smile is huge. The dirt and grime wash away in dark rivulets down V’s shoulders and chest, following the planes of his body as they’re pulled down by gravity. They criss-cross scars left by bullets and blades and a reckless devotion to living life on a knife-edge, a life Kerry can’t begin to fathom being one V has walked. Kerry very carefully swipes his thumb along the length of one of the twin top scars underneath V’s pectoral, drawing a low laugh from V. 

Kerry smiles as well, lifting his hands to cradle V’s waist. “Hey, there.”

“Hey, yourself,” V says, and bends enough to kiss him. His arms come around Kerry’s shoulders, and for a long time they stand there pressed together, letting the dirt and grime of the day wash down the drain in swirls of suds.

“Can wash myself, y’know,” V says quietly, but he doesn’t push Kerry’s hands away. He’s careful over V’s scars, but even the most recent ones don’t hurt anymore. 

“Not about what you  _ can _ do,” Kerry murmurs. “Bout what I wanna do. You okay with that?” 

V’s mouth quirks up again. Easy to smile, easy to please. He lets Kerry roam, lets him fall back into the routine they’d picked up long before when V was sick and dying. Kerry doesn’t begrudge him one bit for teaching him how important the smallest things like this can be — he’s always been a closeted romantic, afterall. 

V doesn’t complain when Kerry pushes him out of the shower with gentle hands even as they get a little more heated than Kerry wants. It’s not that he  _ doesn’t  _ want to get on his knees for V, but this is a  _ date,  _ and it wouldn’t do to end things so quickly —

“What the — what is that?” V laughs, incredulous, as Kerry drops a few bath bombs into the steaming bathwater alongside a puck of rose jam. Kerry snorts, tugs him closer by a hand around his hip. He’s thankful he splurged on a heated tub as he steps into the water, holding a hand out as the bath bombs fizz and bubble. 

“Bubble bath,” Kerry says. “You never had one before?” 

V arches a brow as if to say  _ You know who I am, right?  _ But he takes Kerry’s hand and lets himself be guided into the water. Kerry reclines back first, scooting into the rounded corner of the tub, then pulls V gently down against his chest. Their skin presses together and Kerry can feel every muscle in V’s body relax all at once, sighing through his nose and his head dropping back onto Kerry’s shoulder.

It’s a first for them both. Kerry, because he’s pretty sure he’s never shared a bath with anyone and hadn’t been fucking them at the same time, and V, because it’s clear the merc hasn’t seen bubbles in a bath in his life. Kerry curls his arms around V’s shoulders, kissing his temple as they both relax.

“Smells weird,” V says. “Like your cologne and —“ 

“Roses and vanilla, yes, V,” Kerry scoffs with a smile. “C'mon, please tell me you know what a rose is.”

“I know what a rose is,” V growls, though there’s a distinct tone in his voice that says he probably doesn’t. 

Kerry kisses him again. “Alright, alright, sorry. You’ve just never seen bubbles before either and I was getting worried Vik raised you under a goddamn rock —“ 

He snorts and laughs when V turns abruptly in his arms and dumps a handful of bubbles and water over Kerry’s head. He shakes it out, his hair sticking to one side now, and surges forward, chasing V across the tub as the other man puts space between them for another attack. 

Water sloshes over the edge as Kerry gets another face-full of bubbles, this time with a little more accuracy on V’s part. They both laugh, loud in the wide bathroom, and Kerry swipes the bubbles away from his eyes before snatching V around the waist and dragging him under. They both squirm, V trying to escape and Kerry using his (substantial) upper body strength to keep V pinned against him. They surge back up, laughing through gasping breath, now with streaks of rose-smelling bubbles in their hair and streaming down their skin in pretty iridescent pearls. 

“If I knew you’d try drowning me, I wouldn’t have gotten in here,” V half-laughs, half-gasps. Kerry keeps him close, but he does relent some of his grip so V can sink back into the water, his head resting against the edge with an easy smile on his lips. 

“Just trying to warm you up, is all,” Kerry murmurs. Kerry slots himself between V’s legs, leaning forward on his hands planted on either side of his hips underneath the water for a kiss that V returns. The bubbles continue to rise around them as the bombs fizzle out, turning pink and orange and purple when the dye finally starts melting into the water. Glitter sticks to their skin and hair like a fine diamond sheen, and never before has V looked more beautiful than right now.

V hums against Kerry’s lips. “Look very handsome, y’know,” he says. His fingers trail through Kerry’s wet hair, picking up stray globs of bubbles as they go. “Shit’s weird, but… I like it. Fun to play with.” 

He touches Kerry’s nose with his fingertip, leaving a dollop of bubbles behind. Kerry huffs, sending them swirling up above them as they drift through the air. V’s smile is so wide it makes Kerry’s heart ache, so he scoots forwards enough that their bodies are pressed together again, kissing him through the foam rising around them. 

The kiss is slightly bitter from the soap, but neither of them pull back until they’ve had their fill. V sinks back against the tub, warm and languid, and Kerry follows him, feeling lighter than the steam curling from their skin.

“How ‘bout we do this every night, then,” he says. A promise, an oath. “You and me, right here, and all the bubbles I can fuckin’ find.” 

V’s smile turns radiant. The littlest things please him — such innocuous things that remind Kerry his life has been blood and turmoil up until now. 

“Every night, huh? Even when I come home late and filthy like tonight?”   
  
Kerry scoffs. “ _ Every night _ . I mean it. A date for the both of us.”   
  
V seems to melt at the mention of a date. A  _ date _ . They don’t do dates, not in the traditional sense, and their schedules can be so hectic sometimes that they hardly ever line up enough for more than a few hours spent sleeping together before they’re off again --   
  
“Sure, yeah,” V says. He pecks Kerry on the lips, smiling at the surprise on Kerry’s face. “What? I thought you wanted me to say yes.”   
  
Kerry picks his jaw up off the floor and kisses back. “No, no, just -- the biggest, baddest merc in Night City, coming home every night to have a bubble bath with little ol’ me --”   
  
“Please don’t bring my job into date nights.”   
  
Kerry laughs. “Sorry,  _ syota _ . The mental image is a nice one, though.”   
  
Like he needs one. Like V isn’t warm and pliant underneath him, bubbles sticking to his slicked back hair and a smile on his face so wide Kerry’s worried it’ll split him in two. But he knows he’s smiling just as wide, knows his heart is soaring just as stratosphere-high as V’s. So he picks up a handful of bubbles and starts their fight again, urging V across the tub, water sloshing over the lip and suds flicking high up around them. The bathroom is a mess afterwards and Kerry really does feel bad about leaving the mess for his maids in the morning, but V is worth every dirty look he gets from them. He’s worth so, so much more, yet Kerry will take it, one rosy bath bomb at a time. 


End file.
